


Liam Harper/X7-98

by RandomWordsAndStormyDays



Series: Random's Fallout OCs [6]
Category: Fallout 4
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-10-04
Updated: 2019-10-04
Packaged: 2020-11-23 12:20:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,345
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20892017
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RandomWordsAndStormyDays/pseuds/RandomWordsAndStormyDays
Summary: This is a collection of all the one-shots nad ficlets for my OC Liam.





	Liam Harper/X7-98

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> What happens when a runaway Institute Courser receives a Railroad memory wipe, and that wipe starts to fail?

Liam knows that the harvest is not going to be plentiful this year. He can tell based off of the way the newly planted tatos refuse to take hold of the dirt with their tiny roots, and by the way that they wilt during the day. The humidity is too much this year, every single one of his plots is struggling, and there isn’t much he can do to stop it. Even the razorgrain refuses to bloom properly, and Liam laments the fact that he’s going to have to dip into his caps stash to keep himself fed this year.

Nonetheless he hums to himself as he works, a happy tune that keeps his spirits up. It’s a song his mother used to sing to him during bad weather, when the rad-storms beat heavily against the wooden walls of his room and threatened to flood his home. It’s tedious work, tending to his field and plots, but it’s work that he’s done his entire life, learning the skills of the trade from his father, so he doesn’t have to focus very hard. The repetitive motion of digging, planting, and watering brings him comfort, he’s focused on his crops when a noise from behind his house startles him.

Quickly he raises onto his feet and lifts his pistol, aiming at the sound. His heart thuds violently as a slew of raiders appears from inside his home.

“Lovely house you have here,” one of the raiders shouts, “and quite the farm, too.”

A few of the other men and women echo cries of ‘yeah’ and ‘damn right’ as they stalk forward, their delight terrifies him.

“How about you pay us a tribute, and we let you keep your hands?” The threat is tossed out like a friendly invitation, instead of the demand that it really is.

The gun is steady in his hands, but nervousness is dancing across his skin. It’s not very often that he has to deal with raiders, his farm is secluded enough and small enough that the through traffic is usually light and enemy free. These men and women must be desperate if they’re here for what little he has, which means that he’s likely to lose. One versus six isn’t very good odds, and Liam knows he doesn’t have the fighting experience necessary to win. Still, he’s not going to let them take his home away, he’ll die before that happens.

He still hasn’t responded when the raider continues. “Listen, just give up and we won’t hurt you.” The words sound familiar, sparking a vague sense of deja vu through him, but before Liam can focus on the sensation, a sharp pain spikes inside of his head. He fumbles, wincing hard against the hurt that is slowly leaking across his skull.

In his moment of weakness, the raiders strike.

He’s cognizant of them grabbing his arms and throwing him to the ground, but all he can feel is the pain crackling and burning inside of him. Flashes of memories dance at the very edge of his conciousness, nothing enough for him to hold on to, but enough to confuse him. He sees pure white walls, dark leather coats, angry looking men in reflective sunglasses. With each new scene and memory the roaring agony increases until he can’t even feel the dirt underneath him, until he can no longer hear the raiders stealing him life’s work, until he no longer remembers his own name.

Eventually, the sensations overwhelm him, and he falls unconscious. The last thing he recalls is a scared looking woman, calling him X7-98 and begging him not to turn her in to some place called the SRB.

Liam comes to slowly, groaning from the soreness of his body and the lingering pain inside of his head. A glance a the sky reveals that the sun is setting, he’s lost most of his day. His arms shake as he pushes himself onto his feet, his body still hasn’t recovered from the assault and his knees pop as he stands.

Disappointment settles heavy in his gut as he takes in the sight of his destroyed garden. His tato plants have been ripped out at the root, his melons are smashed, and his razorgrain is shredded into little shards. Weeks of worth, destroyed in a day. It’ll take him all night to even begin to put a dent in the mess that they left him.

His only blessing is that the raiders didn’t kill him, or paralyze him.

As he’s staring out at his destroyed homestead he begins to remember the scenes that flashed through his mind before he passed out. Nowhere in the Commonwealth is that clean, pure white, no dirt, no blood, not even a single piece of trash. It all must have been some sort of weird dream. Right? Except that woman had looked so real, seemed so familiar. He tries to focus on her face, and as details come into focus a name sticks out to him: Ella. Her name is Ella.

She looked so desperate in his memories, gray eyes wide with fear, and that fear was directed at him. Liam shook the images away, they can’t be real. He’s been a farmer his entire life, and only settled in the Commonwealth a few years ago, he doesn’t know an Ella, and no one has ever looked at him life he’d hurt them before. Still, that night, he dreams of her.

Fall comes sooner than anyone expects and there hasn’t been enough time for Liam to fully restock the supplies that were stolen from him. He finds comfort in the fact that the caravaners that come by are friendly, and slip him some extra food when they hear of his assault. Mentally he makes a note to pay them back next season, for now he works on preparing himself dinner.

As he rotates the kebab of squirrel bits over the fire another memory hits him, fast and hard, just like the first time. He only has enough wits about him to keep from pitching into the fire before the pain overtakes him once more. This time he recognizes the area around him, downtown Boston, near the river. He sees himself standing over a man, and for some reason he knows that the man is a synth, although he doesn’t know why he knows.

“Please, please just let me go.” Liam clamps his hands around the man’s neck and lifts him from the ground.

“N7-99, you are to be-”

“My name is Ethan!” Even though the grip around his throat is crushing, the man still manages to shout. “My name is Ethan and I refuse to go back!”

“Do not make this more difficult than it needs to be.”

Ethan spits in his face and Liam slams his skull into the ground, knocking him out. He then lifts a hand to the communicator on his wrist. “X7-98, requesting relay back with reclaimed synth N7-99.”

The memory fades, leaving feelings of anger and regret behind. Liam sits up and pushes himself away from the fire, grabbing his now-charred dinner as he goes. It’s been a few months since the first memory, long enough that he had started to wonder if it had all been some sort of crazy dream brought on by a sharp blow from one of the raiders. Now, as he recalls the way Ethan’s throat had felt in his hands, he knows that it was real. And the most recent memory seems to imply that, not only is he a synth, but that he’s a Courser that they sent to reclaim the synths that managed to escape.

That or he’s going absolutely crazy, which seems just as plausible.

Feeling sick, and no longer hungry, he chucks his dinner into the fire pit and heads inside. Tomorrow he’ll look for answers, tonight he just wants to forget everything. He grabs a bottle of whiskey as he drops onto his mattress, takes a long swig, and then lays down. He falls asleep, drowning in both alcohol and false memories.


End file.
